Mrs. Crowhurst and Elinor were the only ones he liked, and he saw little of either. Elinor was generally lost in the crowd, and it was only for brief moments that they found themselves together. Elinor was a year older than he was and she had been kind to him and petted him. One day, when no one else was in the room, she had kissed him and told him that she liked him much better than her brothers. “They’re always so noisy and rough,” she had said, “and not nearly as pretty as you are, Adrian.”
He had thought her pretty, with her mop of dark curls and her shining brown eyes, but, except for those rare moments when she remembered Adrian’s existence and grew gentle and endearing, she was as noisy as the rest of them. He had longed for the end of his visit, and one day when he was ostensibly writing to Aunt Clara, he had made a little calendar showing, for each day, the total number of days till the end of the holidays. He kept it in his pocket and crossed the days off when he was alone; and sometimes he would refrain for several days so as to have the luxury of obliterating three or four days at a single blow, and so, he felt, bring the day of release suddenly nearer.
When the last day came at length, he had turned suddenly reckless from sheer relief and had laughed and talked and joined in the nightly pillow-fight with the rest. When he left them next morning, dressed in his school clothes, they had seemed quite sorry.
But Adrian had not been sorry: he had been unutterably glad. Even to return to Waldo was a matter for rejoicing compared with life at the Crowhursts. He had resolved that if ever Aunt Clara told him he was to go to the Crowhursts’ again, he would run away from school before the end of term. Elinor had written to him twice during the weeks that followed, but it never occurred to him to answer her letters.…
The green curtains swam apart again and let in a great searchlight of sunshine. He stretched himself like a young cat in the comfortable bed and dismissed the Crowhurst sensations. That brief revival of them had served to make him savour, even more fully than before, the delights of the life he was now leading. Yes, it was a happy life. Its only cloud was still a long way off—the fact that next September he was going to a public school. When he thought of Charminster he imagined a school ten times as big as Waldo, full of very big, aggressive boys. The idea filled him with cold forebodings. But September was a very long time away, and he was not going to allow that remote prospect to spoil his present enjoyment. Besides, anything might happen before then. His mother might come home and take him back with her to India. He had read Kim, and had dreamed with half-frightened glee of the wonderful adventures he might have in India. But then he recalled a thing he was always forgetting, that his mother had married again, that she was the wife of some man he had never seen. The thought, whenever he recalled it, chilled him. Did his mother love this mysterious husband better than she loved him? It seemed likely that she did, because she had gone away to India with the husband and never seemed to want to come and see him or to send for him to go to her. He felt a jealous dislike of his unknown stepfather: he was sure that, if ever he met him, he would hate him; and perhaps his stepfather would hate him in return and be unkind to him.
But even before she had married again he had seen his mother seldom. She was always abroad or just going abroad, it seemed, when the holidays came, and sometimes she would write telling him how disappointed she was not to see her little lamb. He knew quite well that Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob did not like her. Once when, as usual, he had been spending his holidays at Yarn, he had asked Aunt Clara why his mother was always away, and Aunt Clara had replied in the dry way she had of saying to him things which were really intended for the ears of Uncle Bob.
“Your mother, my dear? Big-game hunting, no doubt. Your mother is a woman of much enterprise, Adrian.”
“What do you mean?” he had asked.
“I mean,” Aunt Clara had replied, “that when your holidays come she frequently finds herself otherwise engaged.”
“Yes,” said Adrian, “she wrote to me last week before I left Waldo, and said she was very disappointed.”
“Charming courtesy,” said Aunt Clara.
“Clara!” Uncle Bob’s voice broke in disapprovingly, and thereupon Aunt Clara had laughed and drawn Adrian to her.
“Don’t bother about what your silly aunt says, Adrian. I only mean that I think it’s a pity your mother is away so much.”
All Adrian remembered of these baffling utterances of Aunt Clara’s was the impression they gave him that his mother was somehow doing things she oughtn’t to do. What could it be she was doing? He felt vaguely pained and alarmed. His mother had always been mysterious and disturbing.
Over a year ago Aunt Clara had told him that his mother had married again. “Have you heard from your mother lately, Adrian?” she had asked in her dry way on the day after his arrival at Yarn for the Christmas holidays.
He replied that he had not had a letter during all the previous term.
“Then perhaps you haven’t heard that she has changed her name.”
“Changed her name?” he faltered, afraid of what this mysterious act might signify.
“Yes. You must address your letters in future not to Mrs. Glynde but to Mrs. Clandon.”
“Why, what does it …? What has she …? What does it mean?” he asked shamefacedly.
“Oh, it means simply that she has married again—married a Colonel Clandon.”
Adrian was silent for some moments; then he asked: “Does that mean that she has forgotten about Father?”
Aunt Clara glanced at him. Her eyes softened and her manner, as so often, changed abruptly. It was as if she had flung off that rather baffling coldness of hers and had grown suddenly warm and kind.
“No, of course not, my dear. It only means that she likes Colonel Clandon and has arranged to live with him instead of living alone. People are not happy living alone, you see. No doubt she will write to you from India.”
“Then is Mother in India?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“But isn’t India a very long way off?”
“Well, yes, it’s a good way.”
He was chilled by the idea of his mother suddenly withdrawn to this vast distance. Again he was silent, his mind busy with the disturbing news. Then, “Aunt Clara,” he asked timidly, “will she … will she ever come back?”
“Why, of course she will, my dear child. In fact, I should say she will come back quite soon, for a change. Your mother was always a great one for a change.”
For days Adrian could not get accustomed to what he had heard. “Mother’s in India,” he kept telling himself. “Mother’s called Mrs. Clandon.” But though he repeated these facts to himself, the significance of them escaped him: their only effect was to send a little chill to his heart and add yet another veil to the disturbing mystery that enclosed his mother.…
But now, in the pleasant listlessness of early morning, though his mother glided across his mind with the Crowhursts and the threat of Charminster and strange half-forgotten sayings of Aunt Clara and sundry other ghosts, his thoughts were not deeply concerned with her. They were focussed on his new surroundings and the unexpectedly delightful life which had begun for him on the previous afternoon. And now there was a knock at the door and Stock came in with a can of hot water, wished him good morning, drew the green curtains, flooding the room with golden daylight, and went out telling him that the bathroom was free.
The moment the door closed, Adrian jumped out of bed, and snatching a towel and sponge ran off to the bathroom.
IV
When he arrived in the dining-room the rest were already at table. A letter lay beside his plate. Its presence somehow embarrassed him. He glanced at it, then glanced at the grown-ups; but no one was looking at him. His grandfather was carefully selecting from a silver dish a piece of bacon, which he laid beside a poached egg on a plate and handed to him with a smile. Aunt Clara was pouring out a cup of coffee. Uncle Bob was reading a printed circular. As he received his plate of bacon and egg, Adrian shot a
more attentive glance at the envelope in front of him and saw that it was from his mother. It had an Indian stamp and had been re-addressed from Waldo. He drew it quietly over the edge of the table and slipped it into his pocket. Perhaps no one except Stock had seen the letter: anyhow, no one seemed to be inquisitive about it or even conscious of it.
But, as a matter of fact, before Adrian had come down, Clara had noted it.
“Hallo,” she had said, “another stamp for Adrian’s collection.”
Oliver had raised his brows.
“A prick of conscience from Minnie,” Clara had explained, indicating the Lettter. “There must have been a slackening in the assiduity of the court, or possibly a slight brush with the Colonel.”
The two men exchanged one of the amused glances which Clara’s tongue often evoked.
“Cat!” said Bob.
Clara’s eyes danced. “Yes,” she said, “where Minnie is concerned, I am a cat. I am fully aware of it and I am grateful to Minnie for the opportunity she provides. Minnie is my safety-valve. Or perhaps I’m a rat rather than a cat. Rats, you know, have to gnaw, willy-nilly, to keep their teeth in check: otherwise they grow so long and curly that they can’t eat with them and starve in consequence. That’s why one hears them frantically gnawing beams and timbers in the night. They don’t want to; it’s simply that they have to. It’s the same with me: so long as I can get my teeth into Minnie from time to time, I’m all right. Goodness knows what would happen to me if Minnie were to die.”
“Or to us,” remarked Bob.
Oliver glanced at Bob. “It’s obviously up to us, Bob, to keep The Baggage alive. What a paradox that we should owe our peace and good-humour to Minnie. We must surely be unique in that respect.”
Clara smiled with grim relish. “No doubt it would astound Colonel Clandon to be told of it.”
Adrian was silent and preoccupied after breakfast. He was conscious of the letter in his pocket, and was wondering how soon he could get away by himself and read it. Clara’s belief, which on the previous evening she had expressed in the drawing-room, that he was merely bored and puzzled by his mother’s letters and had almost forgotten her was, like other of her rapid and summary conclusions, quite false. He recalled her vividly with a tantalised and thwarted longing and each letter stirred in him a flicker of hope that she would come to him or send for him and that he would find in her, at last, all that he desired. When he left her letters about, as Clara had reported, it was not because he was bored by them, but because his eagerness had again been met by the inevitable disappointment and perplexity.
Before long he found an opportunity to slink away to his bedroom, and there, having carefully shut the door, he took the letter out of his pocket and opened it. “My own lamb,” he read. “Why have I not heard from you for so long? The months go by, but the postman, horrid man, never brings me a letter from my child. Can he have forgotten his Mummy all these hundreds and thousands of miles away in a strange country? Are your holidays over yet, I wonder, or not yet begun? I never can remember the dates and I can’t find your last letter. No doubt you will go to Yarn as usual. I wrote a long letter to Aunt Clara weeks and weeks ago and not a word have I had in reply. That is the worst of living abroad, every one forgets you, even your nearest and dearest, even my own little Adrian. Well, my dear child, I have no time for more at present. You have no idea how fearfully busy Mummy is. Fondest love and a kiss.”
Having read it through, he lingered for a moment staring vaguely at the letter; then, with a little sigh, he laid it on the dressing-table and, with a sudden change of mood, turned, walked alertly to the door, and went downstairs.
In the afternoon Clara and Bob drove out to call on friends, and Adrian and his grandfather were left together. Adrian had accompanied his uncle and aunt to the garage, and as he watched them drive away he felt a sudden misgiving. It was a little disconcerting to be left alone with his grandfather; and he had strolled out of the stable-yard and, turning away from the house, had prowled about the grounds, following a path through a dark, mysterious shrubbery which ended at a door in a wall. The door was open, and Adrian, peeping inside, discovered the kitchen-garden. A man was digging at the far end of it, so Adrian avoided that end, and, taking a straight path that led to some greenhouses, he went to the door of each in turn and, pressing his nose against the glass, inspected the contents. He did not dare to go inside: the opening and shutting of the glass doors would make a noise and perhaps attract the attention of the gardener. Still following the path, he came to another door in the wall: by this he went out, and soon found himself in a pleasant square of lawn enclosed by trees and shrubs and with a fountain in the middle of it and, at the far end, a glass-fronted summerhouse facing the afternoon sun. He crossed the grass and went to inspect the fountain, holding out his hand to catch the drops. It fascinated him, and he stood there for a long time watching it and from time to time putting his hand into the shower. Sometimes the breeze blew it sideways and it streamed out on to the grass like a silver horse-tail. When he had had enough of the fountain, he crossed the grass to the summerhouse. He glanced cautiously into the entrance, and was startled to see his grandfather sitting there with a pencil in his hand and a little writing-pad on his knees. With a little “Oh!” he was on the point of retreating, but his grandfather’s voice stopped him.
“Don’t go, Adrian.”
“I … I thought perhaps … you were busy.”
“So I was, but I shall be very glad to be interrupted. You see, I wasn’t getting along very well.”
“Were you writing a poem?” asked Adrian, feeling that he was being rather personal.
“I was trying to,” said Oliver, “but it won’t start. They don’t always start when you want them to, you know.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Adrian. He stood therewith his hands in his trouser-pockets, shyly treading on one foot with the other. He hoped that his grandfather would pursue the subject. But for a while the old man said nothing: he seemed to be thinking, and next moment Adrian, blushing at his own boldness, asked: “What was it about?”
“It’s about a Chinese sage—a wise man, you know,” said his grandfather, “who was oppressed by the feeling that one never really gets to know anything of the things we see around us—things such as human beings, mountains, birds, beasts, water, rocks, and so on. We know something about them all, he said to himself, but we don’t really know them. There is always some final barrier. We know, for instance, that water is transparent and wet and thirst-quenching and made up of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen, but we can never say what it is, never know all there is to know about it. We remain apart from it, baffled, somehow, of true experience of it.”
“Yes, I’ve felt that,” said Adrian, sitting down in a basket-chair beside his grandfather. “We know all about them but we can’t ever get at them.”
“That’s it. You’ve seen what I’m driving at. Well, this poem of mine is going to be a sort of parable made out of that idea. The old Chinee resolves that he will seek patiently for knowledge, real knowledge, of one thing in the world. If he could really get to know even one thing only, he would, he felt, be content. In fact, he half suspected that if he did get to know this one thing completely, he would discover that he had got to know everything—that he had found the key, I mean.”
“Yes, I see,” said Adrian. “I like the story.”
“Well, this old Chinee chose water as the door through which he would attain to knowledge; and he went off into the mountains where there was a lonely lake and built himself a little hut on the edge of it. The lake was cupped in a circle of mountain-tops and was fed by waterfalls that tumbled from their rocky sides. And all day long the old man studied the water, watching and touching the waterfalls as you were doing to the fountain there just now, putting his hands into the lake, and sometimes even flinging off his cloak and diving headlong into it. And he would spend whole days and nights imagining himself to be water, water lying calm and passive
under a blue sky or a cloudy sky or a starry sky, still water reflecting all above it and around it and darkly revealing all within it, water with all its glassy skin ruffled by wind or pitted by rain-drops, water wavering out from a centre into widening, undulating circles when a stone is dropped into it, water abandoning itself to leap after leap down cliffs, flinging itself without shrinking or hesitating against stones and rocks and shattering into thousands of drops, each drop having a shape perfect and unique in accordance with the speed and direction in which it is moving; water evaporating, drying, steaming up into the air, giving up its being to another state of being, and turning again into its former being and dropping down through great heights of air to the earth. So he spent his days.
And one day when he was leaning from the window of his hut and gazing intently into the lake, he saw, deep down in the gloomy crystal of the water, a passing of slim ghosts. It was a shoal of fish. They passed and repassed, moving with an unhurrying perfection of motion which entranced him. It was as if the water itself had taken on bodily life in shapes that perfectly expressed its nature.
Then he saw that among these shadowy shapes was one smaller and more lovely than the others, a creature that seemed to be made from the frail rainbow stuff of which bubbles are made, and he knew that this fish was the Genius of the Water, that it was water become alive. And he knew that if only he could tame this fish, not capture it by force or guile, but take it by its own desire, he would come at the knowledge which he sought.
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